Women in Combat Units

by Stuart Crawford

The European Court of Justice's recent outlawing of Germany's ban on women performing combat duty in its armed forces sets a precedent for the armed forces of all the other member states of the EU. The Court sided with an electronics engineer, Tanja Kreil, who was refused a German army job working on weapons systems in 1996 because she was a woman. The death knell for Britain's ban on women in the combat arms of the British Army has sounded.

In Britain's army women have traditionally been restricted to supporting roles only, despite demands that they should also serve in combat units. In 1998, the Secretary of State for Defence increased the percentage of jobs open to women, leaving only the Royal Armoured Corps and the infantry as the last bastions of male exclusivity. The tide is now clearly turning against those who wish to exclude women from the last 30% of the Army.

Legally, the position is confusing. The Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975 makes discrimination on account of gender illegal, subject to certain exceptions. Section 82.4 entirely exempted the Armed Forces from its provisions. However, the Ministry of Defence ran into trouble in its dealings with pregnant Servicewomen, whom it forced to leave. This practice was eventually challenged and the MoD subsequently paid around £55 million pounds in compensation. Finally, in 1995, the Government changed the law but, rather than removing the Armed Services exemption entirely, the Act was amended to say that anything ìdone for the purpose of ensuring the combat effectivenessî of the military was still lawful.

"Combat effectiveness" is the backdrop to most objections to women serving in the combat arms. There are three main arguments deployed against women being involved in direct combat ñ the physical/physiological, psychological, and the practical.

The first argues that women cannot meet the demanding physical conditions endured by the combat soldier. Women lack the physical strength to carry ammunition, load guns, and carry out heavy repair work. This is a sweeping generalisation; some women are just as strong, and at least a few are stronger, than men. I have known many male soldiers who have been unable to carry out strenuous tasks unaided through lack of physical strength. To discriminate against women on this count is therefore grossly unfair. A glance at the Soviet Army during the Second World reinforces the point; nearly a million women served, half of them at the front. To quote one historian, ìwomen in the Red Army were simply expected to carry ammunition, load bombs and big guns, change propellers, and so on. The Soviets seem to have taken for granted what many Westerners still see as an insurmountable obstacleî.

The second argument asserts that women are psychologically unsuited to the task. Women are natural nurturers and carers and to ask them to kill goes against nature. This is wonderfully emotive stuff, but it is based on third hand anecdotal small talk and flies in the face of historical evidence. Again, Soviet women were adept at killing the enemy during the Great Patriotic War. One woman sniper had over 300 kills to her credit. Women operated with partisan bands behind German lines in a particularly vicious struggle where little quarter was given by either side. More recently, female terrorists have proved to be every bit as effective and violent as their male counterparts.

The final argument is the practical one; the integration of women into all male units is more trouble than it's worth. It would require the provision of privacy in barracks and in the field, or separate changing and toilet facilities. I'm afraid none of these survives serious challenge. Anyone who has commanded a mixed gender unit quickly realises that the requirements for privacy are easily met. Males and females make allowances for each other in an unassuming and dignified way which satisfies even the most prudish. Having been a soldier I can also tell you that, no matter how attractive your companions might be in other circumstances, the thought of snuggling up close to them in proper training or operations comes way down the list of soldiers'desires, well below sleep, food, drink, cleanliness, receiving mail from home and reading a decent book in peace!

So, should women be kept out of the Army's combat units? I don't think so. I rather suspect that the desire to exclude women has more to do with fear of competition than anything else. In many areas of military activity women are at least as good as men, and in some are consistently considerably better. Excluding women on the back of a handful of ill reasoned and specious arguments is not sustainable. None of these excuses prevent women serving alongside men in the police, fire service, and other organisations whose own dangerous and arduous operations are a lot more frequent and commonplace than the Army's.

On the other hand, it's unlikely that women will soon provide 52% of the combat arms of the Army. I very much doubt if many women actually want to be infantry soldiers or tank gunners. But the important point is that the choice should be theirs, not that of men sitting on a committee somewhere denying them the opportunity in the first place. The Army should welcome the opportunities which the full emancipation of women in the military is sure to bring. With an orbat many thousands of soldiers short of establishment, European law on a collision course, and public opinion firmly behind equal opportunities, it would be foolish to do anything else.

© SWC 2000

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